If you're interested in the Al Azhar book-banning issue that I wrote about here, read this fine opinion piece by Hossam Bahgat in today's Daily Star. Bahgat reminds us that Al Azhar is a state institution and questions the "secular intellectuals vs. Islamizing state" phenomenon.

Issandr El Amrani is a Cairo-based writer and consultant. His reporting and commentary on the Middle East and North Africa has appeared in The Economist, London Review of Books, Financial Times, The National, The Guardian, Time and other publications. He also publishes one of the longest-running blog in the region, www.arabist.net.